choice
by ShadowsTakeAll
Summary: You spend the rest of the night wondering how you let a ghost steal your life.


**Hey guys. This was meant to be a Surprise Friday installment but I've given up on my update schedule so I figured I may as well put this up now. This is a Scira one-shot, set after the end of S3 but before the start of S4. Second person, so be warned. Usual warnings: angst, unhappiness, etc. This style is different for me and I also haven't really written for this pairing before, so I hope I did them justice. That's about it, so enjoy the story and please do let me know what you think.**

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.

You're his second choice.

.

It's painfully obvious to everyone around you, even if they don't say it aloud. (Malia's the only one who does and you figure she's allowed a little tactlessness after being a coyote for eight years.) It was obvious enough when Allison was alive, in the looks she and Scott shared, in the electricity that crackled between them – Scott swore it was nothing, but you never quite believed him. It wasn't nothing; it was history. An entire lifetime you weren't there for.

It was obvious then, but now it's so much worse. It's a kind of slap-you-in-the-face, keep-you-up-at-night obvious, clear as day and bright as sun and about a thousand other weather-related similes. (You've been spending too much time with Malia and her nature-loving, society-hating feelings may be starting to rub off on you.)

For a month after her death, Scott doesn't smile at all. The first time you do see him smile is just before school one morning, when the air feels cold enough to freeze your bones and you find yourself feeling bitter that being a thunder kitsune doesn't give you some kind of natural immunity to the cold. Scott, Stiles, and Lydia are standing on the front steps; she's holding Stiles' hand and Stiles has his other hand on Scott's shoulder. You start to approach but something stops you. Scott says something, eyes downcast, and Stiles' eyes widen in surprise and then all three of them laugh. It sounds almost unnatural and cuts off too quickly, but it's real.

The bell rings and you watch your three friends walk into the building, and none of them even think to look back.

.

You try to be happy for them, you really do – progress is progress, right? – but the next time you smile it feels a little less sincere.

.

Weeks pass and life goes on and you all find a way to deal. Lydia starts taking a yoga class; Stiles volunteers to help teach some of the freshmen lacrosse; Scott picks up more shifts at the clinic. You find yourself spending a lot of time with Malia, and one afternoon as you're at the local pizza place (completely forgetting this was where Scott took you on your first real date, and ignoring the suggestive looks the waiter is giving you and your friend) you tell her you feel like you're haunted by Allison's ghost. (Metaphorically – in Beacon Hills, you have to clarify statements like that, just in case.)

Malia chews thoughtfully on a slice of pizza and says, "You know, Allison's memory seems more alive than you are these days."

You spend the rest of the night wondering how you let a ghost steal your life.

.

A couple weeks later you make a decision. You're not going to walk in the shadow of a fallen hunter; you're not going to go around feeling like the Oni's blade cut you that night too.

You're going to find out everything you can about Allison Argent, so you can follow the strings of her life and understand why so many hearts were broken when it snapped.

.

The first person you go to is Stiles.

.

He greets you with a startled smile and steps back to let you into his room, and you duck your head to block out the darkness in his eyes. (You tell yourself that it's Stiles, that it's not the monster who stole his face and ended Allison's life, but your heart's too slow to catch up to your mind's firm reprimands.)

You start to speak but he cuts you off.

"I know why you're here. I'm just surprised it took you so long."

Without another word he pulls out a thick leather bound notebook from under his bed. The word _Bestiary _is carved into the cover, and you recognize the writing as Stiles'. (You have to work hard to stop yourself picturing Stiles holding a knife.) He flips it open to the first page. "This is a -"

"Bestiary," you say, and he snorts. "Yeah, I kinda got that."

For the next hour you pore through the book, each handwritten entry detailing a different supernatural creature. Even hunters are in there, but they have their own section, with descriptions of each known hunter and even hand-drawn pictures of them. (You realize that Lydia drew them, and remember she drew one of you one day in class. You didn't get a good look because she blushed and tucked it back into her bag, mumbling about art projects and college applications.)

There's a page missing from the hunters section, and Stiles runs his finger along the jagged edge it left behind.

"She helped me write this, you know," he says quietly, looking at the book. "It took us hours, but we wanted to have some kind of supernatural guide book. We didn't want to be caught unprepared."

The last entry is a half-written one on kitsunes. When you get to it, Stiles hands you the book. "You probably know more about them than I do."

"I wouldn't count on it," you say, but you take the book and find a pen and spend the next twenty minutes jotting down everything you can think of about kitsunes. You make a mental note to ask Lydia to stick the picture in here sometime.

"Tell me about her," you say when you're finished, closing the book and sitting cross-legged on his bed.

Stiles swings his legs back and forth, staring at the ground, and you're scared you've said the wrong thing. "She was one of the strongest people I've ever met," he says after a while, voice low and almost reverential. "And not just physically – emotionally. She was tough. She could stitch someone up with nothing but a needle and thread, or hit a target a hundred yards away, or run cross-country without breaking a sweat." His voice gets a kind of wistful tone to it and something like a smile tugs at his lips. "But she wasn't hard, you know? She could make you laugh like nothing else, she could come up with compliments as easily as insults, and she… she never let the world take away her smile."

His words trail off and you feel your heart caught in your throat, beating like an off-tempo drum.

"She sounds amazing," you say, and it's entirely inadequate because from what you can remember of her, Allison Argent was no less than a hero.

"I think you really would have liked her, if you'd gotten to spend more time with her," Stiles says, giving you a sideways look.

You smile in response, but it's forced. Because the question was never whether you would have liked her. You know you would.

The question is whether she would have liked you.

.

Over the next week, you help Stiles update the Bestiary. Lydia gives you the picture of you and you stick it under the heading _Kitsunes. _You write the entry on nogitsunes because you're the only one who can. Late one Friday afternoon you hand the book back to Stiles, who flicks through it with a look almost like awe in his face.

"This is so… thorough," he says, scanning the new pages.

"I don't do things by halves." You watch his hands trace the title – _Nogitsunes_ – and you swear you can hear his heart shudder.

"Yeah," he says softly, "neither did she."

.

The next person you go to is Lydia.

.

You consider her a friend now, but you're not naïve enough to think you'll ever mean half as much to her as Allison did, but that's okay.

After school on Monday she offers to drive you home, and you seize the opportunity.

"I wanted to talk," you say carefully, "about Allison."

Her fingers clench around the steering wheel, but she doesn't seem angry. The look she gives you is a mix of pain and sympathy, and you're not sure which one hurts more. "What did you want to know?"

"Everything." You start to say more, but suddenly Lydia's swinging the car left when your house is after the next right turn, and you know she understands.

You pull up outside the preserve and she gets out. (She doesn't even hesitate, which you take to mean either determination or recklessness. Either would be fine for you right now.) "Come on," she says, slinging a bag over her shoulder and holding out a hand. "I want to show you something."

You follow her into the woods, deeper than you've been before, and you're about to ask where you're going when you see it. A tree up ahead, about fifty yards away, with a circle carved into the trunk at about head-height. A target.

There's a thud as Lydia dumps her bag on the ground, and you watch in fascination as she pulls out a bow and some arrows. (You've always thought she was strong, but you never really thought of her as a fighter.)

You know better than to speak, so you wait in silence. With practised movements, Lydia loads the bow, aims it, and looses the arrow. It lands on the very edge of the target, quivering, and she sighs.

"Allison had only just started teaching me how to shoot," she explains, loading another arrow. She squints this time, deep in concentration, and the arrow lands almost on top of the first one.

"Well," you say encouragingly, "at least you're consistent."

She dips her head with something that's almost a smile. "I'm still not very good at it," she says, and you realize this is the only thing you've ever seen Lydia do where she wasn't the best. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

You bite your lip. "What would Allison say?" you ask tentatively.

After the customary flinch on hearing the dead hunter's name, Lydia's expression turns contemplative. "Probably that I'm overthinking it. She was always saying I should rely on instinct more."

The banshee takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and shoots. The arrow lands exactly in the centre of the target.

A grin blooms on Lydia's face, and for a moment the almost ever-present pain fades from her eyes. You can't help but grin back.

As you go to collect the arrows, Lydia says, "I already knew a lot about this in theory. I've read about a hundred books on the subject."

This would be embellishment for anyone else, but with Lydia you're not surprised.

"I used to be really theoretical," she goes on, with a slight grunt as she yanks one of the arrows out of the tree, "but then Allison started insisting I learn things in practice too. She kept reminding me that there's more to life than books, and she was always joking about how I needed to stop reading and start living."

You hand her back the last of the arrows and start to follow her back to the bag.

"The thing is," she says as she rungs a finger along the string of the bow, "she was more than just a hunter. She was a warrior, and she was fierce, but she – she was also a teenage girl. She was gentle and sensitive and… and she was my best friend."

Lydia falls into reminiscent silence and you let her have her moment. She doesn't need consolation; she needs time.

"Hey," she says suddenly, holding out the bow, "do you want to try?"

You do. Your first three attempts miss the tree entirely; your next two hit the base; and finally you get one inside the target.

As you walk back to the car, Lydia with a bow in one hand and you carrying the arrows, you realize you were never meant to fill Allison's shoes.

But you still wish you could be half the girl she was.

.

You have a couple more archery lessons, but you don't get any better. Eventually you give up entirely in favor of your katana, but you still go out to the woods twice a week to help Lydia practice her skills. She tells you stories about Allison and you listen in growing wonder, increasingly in awe of a girl who was more than a hero, more than a legend. She was a girl who could have been your friend.

You don't pick up a bow again, but you sleep with an arrow next to your bed, a reminder of a girl who was only human but who fought with the courage of a thousand supernaturals.

.

The last person you go to is Scott.

.

You knew this was coming and somehow you're still not prepared for it, and neither is he. It's been a few months since Allison died (you're not sure how long exactly, but you know Stiles has been counting the days) and things are starting to go back to normal. No supernatural disasters, no flunking out of school, nothing to threaten or endanger you and your friends. Scott's pack. (You almost think of them as your family now, but you're not sure how they'd feel about that.)

It's late one Friday afternoon when you show up to his house, and when he opens the door he's still wearing his lacrosse uniform. He greets you with a smile (but not a kiss, you notice with just a hint of bitterness) and invites you inside, and you start making tea while he goes upstairs to get changed.

Five minutes later you're comfortably seated in the living room, and he's telling you about his lacrosse practice and asking about your day and (dear god) you think you're falling in love with him all over again.

Of course, you haven't told him you're in love with him.

No.

That would be foolish.

(Besides, he probably doesn't love you back, right?)

You talk for a while and then fall into comfortable silence, only you feel distinctly uncomfortable because you know you're about to bring up the one thing you've never been able to talk to Scott about.

But before you can, he speaks. "Are you okay?"

It's stupid – so, so stupid – but you feel like crying. He noticed you weren't okay, he knew something was wrong, and there's such a genuine look of concern on his face that you can't stop yourself from spilling it all.

How you feel like you'll never measure up to Allison's memory. How you worry Scott never stopped loving her. How you feel like you're his second choice and you'd understand if he decided he couldn't date you anymore.

By the end of it you're almost in tears – and Scott is smiling. _Smiling._

"What?" you mumble as you swipe at your eyes with the back of your hands.

"Nothing," he says, using his thumb to wipe away a single tear that's slipped down your cheek, "you're just adorable when you ramble."

Somehow it makes you smile too, and a moment later he pulls you to your feet and leads you outside. As you wrap your arms around him, he starts his bike, and you close your eyes and breathe in his scent and you wonder if you'll ever feel this close to anyone again.

The wind whips your hair back and you feel almost weightless, and all too soon it stops and Scott's holding out his hand to help you from the bike.

Scott leads you into the woods, and you don't question it. He's your boyfriend, he's your alpha, sometimes he's the only good thing you have going for you, and you would trust him with your life.

The moon is rising over the hills as you reach what Scott proudly announces is _it. _At first you don't see what's so special about the place, but then you step around him and set your eyes on the most beautiful scene you've ever experienced.

There's a waterfall right in front of you, moonlight bouncing off it, trees reflected in the pool at the base, a light wind riffling the grass on the banks.

"I come here when I need to be alone," Scott explains, holding out his hand and leading you to a large boulder near the base of the waterfall.

You sit down beside him, knees brushing, hands still linked, and stare at the water for a while. "It's beautiful," you tell him, but words don't seem adequate.

He doesn't respond, just sits there basking in the moonlight, and he seems almost ethereal, otherworldly, and you have to squeeze his hand just to know he's real and not just a wild fantasy. "I've never taken anyone else here before," he confides.

Your breath catches in your throat. "Not even -?"

"Not even Allison." He squeezes your hand, smiles at you, and then looks back at the water. "She was my first love… but that doesn't mean she has to be my last. Part of me will always love her, but I'm with you." He hesitates, his gaze flickering between you and the water, and it feels like you can't breathe. "I love you, Kira."

It's the first time he's said it, and you're so surprised you almost fall off the boulder. You catch yourself just in time, giving Scott what you hope is a demure smile, and say, "I love you too."

Scott's smile gets a teasing glint in it. "I know," he says, and you playfully shove him.

His eyes fly wide open as he tumbles into the water, and you're not quick enough to let go of his hand so you fall in after him. And even though the water's freezing and within seconds your teeth are chattering, you can't keep the smile off your face.

.

Somehow you both end up underwater, stars swimming above you and murky depths below, and if it were anyone else but Scott here you might feel uneasy. But it's him, and you feel safe, and you find each other in the dim moonlight just below the surface and you kiss each other hard, balancing water and breath and hopes and dreams, and then you emerge gasping for air and laughing like lunatics.

"Well," Scott says, "that was a first."

You don't say anything, just kiss him again, completely content with being his second choice – because the important thing was never that he chose her first.

It's that he's choosing you now.

.

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**Don't forget to review!**


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